China's Nuclear Weapons

[baltoro]

A couple of days ago, I read this weird article in the Wall Street Journal: How Many Nukes Does China Have?
You can read the full article by searching google for the article title and the keywords, "Wall Street Journal".

"China's tunnel-digging mania did not end with Mao's death. If anything, it intensified. In December 2009, as part of the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic, the PLA announced to great fanfare that the Second Artillery Corps has built a cumulative total of 3,000 miles of tunnels—half of them during the last 15 years."

"In the late 1960s, the U.S. military projected that China would be able to field 435 warheads by 1973. A straight-line extrapolation based on that assumption would suggest that China would have somewhere in the order of 3,000 warheads today. In 1984 the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that China would have 818 warheads by 1994 and more than 1,000 today. More recent reports in the Chinese media put the figure somewhere between 2,350 and 3,500, with an average annual warhead production of 200 over the last decade."

The low estimate of China's arsenal, he (an American defense official named Phillip Karber) believes, originally derived from an estimate of delivery vehicles—meaning missiles, mobile launchers, airplanes and submarines—that could be observed. After that, he suspects, "lack of new evidence and inertia seem to have kept the numbers flat."

You guys know that I'm a maniac when it comes to Wild Conspiracy Theories,... :eek
...But, this one is way better than my,...HUTCH is actually William Casey concept,...

[dedndave]

i say that "tunnels" is probably the biggest reason we lost in viet nam
we need to build some tunnels over here - for something other than drug trafficing - lol

[hutch--]

How about a wild conspiracy theory on all of the tunnelling ? Leak it to your enemies that you have many dark and dangerous secrets that require very deep tunnels to keep them safe and when they invade they go looking for them. Now apart from Saddam style WMDs which just didn't exist, it means that the bad guys have to expend all that effort to find something that doesn't exist and if you want to be nasty about it, booby trap the tunnels (for security reasons).

Now after invading a few countries and finding out that it was all bullsh*t to start with, suddenly tunnelling becomes a safe place to hide all of your own nasties as the bad guys know there is nothing in them except booby traps.

Now with that out of the road, think of the nasties you could have, a long range pie thrower to hit politicians in the face while they are making policy speeches, a specialised laser designed to create ladders in the stockings of unpopular female politicians, a long range political lie detector that checks the truth of what a politician is saying in real time and broadcasts it on the internet with realistic captions "Lie", "Spin","Bullsh*t","Pile Of Crap", "Meaningless Waffle","Outright fabrication", "deliberate falsification" etc etc ....

With such an arsenal of dangerous political weapons they would try and NUKE you.

[dedndave]

that was the thing in nam
the tunnels were often booby-trapped
fact is - we had no idea how extensive their tunnel system was until after the war was over
we are fighting similar battles in the mountainous regions along the Pakistan border
bombs aren't much good - and, you never know if you "got the guy" or not

[hutch--]

I still think the specialised laser is the way to go, can you imagine Billary, Sarah Dumbcluck or even Condy about to wax lyrical and just as they open their mouth they get hit in the kneecap with a ladder in their stockings that just ruins their day.

Now if you think that Helen of Troy was a war starter, wait til you see Billary with a laddered stocking.  :P

[dedndave]

Condy's stockings
eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww - bad visual   :dazzled:

[carlos]

This could be a Pentagon commander worst nightmare: Tunnels hiding a massive stockpile of LSL's (Linear Shoe Launcher), No politician Will be safe anywere

[Farabi]

Yeah, sounds China is really a threat for all of us. They keep using their own map when complaining about their teritorial. Indiscriminatly.

[anunitu]

I was watching a history channel program called "Dog fights of the future" and towards the end they showed satellite killers, I haven't heard that before,but it seems China and the U.S. have both tested this in actual fact. We(U.S.) did it to an old satellite of ours,and China also knocked one of their old ones out of orbit.

[hutch--]

The Russians did it years ago as well but satellite killers are a two edged sword, there is so much junk floating around in orbit that its becoming more and more difficult to keep something you want in orbit without it being hit by a piece of junk. It can be something tiny like a flake of paint and when it hits something at 20  to 30 thousand miles an hour it does substantial damage.

[Farabi]

To be honest, we really need chinas goods, but I cant say anything if they doing that. We only hope that we can discuss this and solve the problem. China is a great nation, well at least if you see the china on indonesia, not on the RRC. I heard theyre absolutly individuals.